
Between 2020 and 2021, so right when the pandemic hit, Manhattan alone lost $16 billion of federally-taxable income, according to this recent study by Economic Innovation Group. And San Francisco saw net migration that reduced its federal income tax base by more than $8 billion. At the time, this represented about a 20% decline.
Now, I don't know to what extent this maybe changed, slowed, or reversed from 2021 to today, but the IRS tax data is pretty clear: the pandemic accelerated a longstanding trend of Americans moving out of older coastal cities toward newer, sunnier, and more sprawling cities in the sun belt and in the Mountain West region.
Here is a map from EIG showing the difference in incomes between households moving in and moving out of each US county. A dark blue county means that the people who moved in were richer than the people who left. (For an interactive version, click through to their website.)


